Motorola reveals Xoom tablet and new Android phones at CES

Motorola, like many technology companies attending the
Consumer Electronics Show, headlined its presentation with an
iPad-competing tablet. During its press conference in Las Vegas,
the company outed the Motorola Xoom.

The oddly-named slate device runs Google's much-anticipated
Android 3.0 " Honeycomb" operating system, a release that's designed
specifically with tablets in mind. That gives it access to the new
3D-enabled
Google Maps 5, Google's eBooks store and hundreds of thousands
of apps on the Android Market.

The tablet packs some impressive hardware, too. The
10.1-inch display runs at 1280 x 800 resolution and hides a
dual-core 1Ghz processor underneath, a 5-megapixel camera around
the back and a 2-megapixel webcam on the front. There's the usual
set of sensors under the hood, and it can also supply 1080p video
to your TV through an HDMI-out port. It'll run on both 3G and 4G
mobile networks when it launches early this year.

Tablets weren't the only thing on Motorola's agenda, with
the manfacturer also revealing a handful of Android-powered
smartphones.

The Droid Bionic, a dual-core device with a massive 4.2-inch HD
display, will run on Verizon's LTE network -- a super fast phone
network that's rolling out throughout North America. Not so useful
for those of us across the Atlantic, though, where no such infrastructure currently exists.

And then there's the Atrix 4G, an Android 2.2 mobile, with a dual core 1Ghz
processor, 1GB of memory and a high resolution qHD display. It even
comes with its own laptop screen-and-keyboard dock to turn the
beefy device into a functional notebook. That's coming to the UK on
Orange later this year.

Finally, there's the Motorola CLIQ 2, the successor to one of the company's first
Android handsets, hoping to bring the aging phone up to the
standards of more modern devices. That involves a larger display, a
five megapixel camera and a 1GHz processor. It also packs a bizarre
honeycomb-style keyboard layout -- the bee-derived structure,
rather than the Android update.

Mark Brown is a daily news writer for Wired.co.uk. He can be found
on Twitter at @BritishGaming.
Follow Wired at @WiredUK.

Edited by Duncan Geere

Comments

You forget about Motorola's most famous feature.. the locked bootloader. HTC Magic users already are using Android 2.3 Gingerbread, while Milestone users are still waiting for 2.2 Froyo.